Squint

Dating is part of what's making me so unbearable to be
around lately. I mean, come on, I'm crabby as hell and
it's mainly due to the lack of sincerity in my life and the
invasion of others' energy from every angle and perspective.

"In our endeavor we are never seeing eye to eye
No guts to sever so forever may we wave good-bye
And you're always telling me that it's my turn to move
When I wonder what could make the needle jump the
groove"

What I can't seem to get off my mind is how much I feel
trapped in myself right now. I started re-reading Frankenstein
and I'm feeling the alienation so much differently this read
than I did the last. I mean, I'm actually feeling it personally --
I don't recall having that happen before. And, it got me thinking
about two things: AI, which was the most horrendously
gut-wrenching movie I've ever seen and Anna Karenina, which
is probably one of the most heart-breaking novels of all time.

In Anna K, Tolstoy writes Anna with a nervous tick. Every time
she's forced to face something she doesn't like or deal with a
truth she doesn't want to believe, Anna squints her eyes.
The squint becomes a metaphor for distance and disregard. As
if, when she doesn't look at something head-on
with eyes wide open, Anna can somehow negate its existence.
Brilliant. Two thumbs up to a great approach to life. Ignore
whatever makes you sad or uncomfortable.

The problem? Right now, I'm what's making me sad and
uncomfortable and the alienation I feel is born out of the
foreignness I feel with myself. Tonight I really noticed it, how
wound up around myself I am. How much all my defenses are
up and how closed off I am from interacting with people. Like
I can will everyone else's energy away from me and keep mine
shut up inside.

100 years ago (at least it feels that way now, though it was
actually 7 1/2 years), I wrote a brilliant analysis of Tolstoy's
use of the squint in Anna K. I can't remember exactly what my
conclusion was, but I'm pretty sure it went something like this:
As long as Anna refuses to see the truth she will remain locked
in her own self-actualized hell. Though she thinks the reality
of her life is too harsh to bear, the opposite is probably true.
In fact, most likely, she would be better to see what is actually
there, acknowledge it, feel it, and move past it. By hiding from
it she's only prolonging her mental and emotional distress and
wearing down the fabric of her fortitude and independence.
Tolstoy uses the squint as a means of revealing her
vulnerability and her deep regret for the ways she has
underperformed in her own eyes.

Pretty beautiful stuff.

So what's it mean for me, now, 7 1/2 years later? I need to
let all of this out. I need to feel it. I really, actually, need a
good cry. I need to stop bottling every bit of what I'm
experiencing up and winding it tight in my gut where it's
wreaking havoc on my soul. But honestly, I'm afraid of the
stress of feeling these emotions and I'm scared I don't have
anyone in my life strong enough to support me through
them. It is easier to bury them.

But, driving home tonight, when I pulled down my visor mirror
and saw my reflection squinting back at me I realized that I've
got to start paying attention to what's impeding my vision --
namely, me. 

With, not a Shout, but an Apocalyptic Screech

"Don't give a shit about the temperature in Guatemala
Don't really see what all the fuss is about
Ain't gonna worry about no future generations
And I'm sure somebody's gonna figure it out
...
Well I use to stand for something
But forgot what that could be
There's a lot of me inside you
Maybe your afraid to see "


Here's a little known fact about me...not too long ago I was one thousand-fold Internet opposed. I mean, in a crazy, apocalyptic, the end-is-near kind of way. Probably much the same as I imagine storytellers or the Catholic Church reacted when Gutenberg built his printing press...

What changed in 7 years? What brought me over to the dark side of cultural and social interaction? Well, first, let me back up and say that everything I feared would happen to our society as a result of the Internet has come true -- and it's not just a little ironic that Year Zero, which is arguably NIN's most apocalyptic record to date, surfaced through a barrage of the most ambitious and brilliant social media marketing I've yet to see. Not only that, but everything I feared I would become as a result of the Internet has also materialized. I am, in fact, now, in a way I never could have been before...asleep, drugged by media, lulled into quietude and passivity, technology-obsessed, completely unable to function without a computer, and completely unable to "speak", "type", and "interact" in non-email, non-text, non-im shorthand.

The brilliant girl who used to write long eloquent letters by hand -- 10 or 20 of them a week -- has been replaced by a total airhead who can barely master printing her letters in the correct order, because she's so used to typing followed by spell-check.

So, what changed? Same problem as the post-apocalyptic world of Year Zero...complacency. I could not beat the revolution, I could not convince anyone that we were headed in the wrong direction, AND I could not stop myself from being pulled into the mix. I gave in to the ease, the convenience, the laziness, the sloth. And, ultimately in a great twist of irony and fate, a very well-known fact about me (especially for those that read this blog and know the way of the beta -- who I've been spying on again, by the way, because social media makes it so easy to do so), social media as we know it in the mid-to-late 2000s, destroyed my life. Or the illusion of the life I had.

Apocalyptic whining? Yes.

Unfair characterization of social media, the Internet, and/or the power of this crap to totally reinvent even the strongest and most sincere among us? NO!

So, call me Chicken Little. I've heard it before. I won't reiterate the theories and opinions that were laughed at so many years ago... I won't try to explain what I know is true: That interconnectedness and democratization of information are an Illusion -- as the Web expands we, as a society, contract into lifeless, thoughtless, zombies.

In the immortal words of Bono:

"Where do we go?
Where do we go from here?
Where to go?
...
And staring at each other.
We were doing nothing.
Jerusalem, jerusalem.
Shout, shout.
With a shout, shout it out."

Or as The Killers like to say... "run for the hills before they burn".

Thanks to Trent for an amazing record and incredibly vivid picture of the present and the future. For what it's worth, I think he's right.

Finding Energy

I think I used to talk about moving energy a lot. Breathing energy a lot. Feeling and sensing energy. Back when it was a commodity in large supply.

Now it's all kind of tapped out. Nearly dried up. And I can't think to move the trickle that drips down my arms and to my typing hands anywhere beyond the keyboard. I'm lucky I can still muster the strength to compose a sentence, never mind keep my eyes open long enough to proof it.

Not to sound old, but this level of exhaustion is somewhat beyond the norm of anything I've ever known and in the midst of it, I'm supposed to be jazzed about dating.

How can I call a guy back who I barely know when I can't even make time to empty the dishwasher or call my favorite sister? I mean, really, what kind of crazy-ass supposition is that....make time for a stranger who could pan out to be important, but probably won't, when you can't even make time for what already is important. Dating is losing this battle and I'm not finding the energy to strike up a conquest and rally the troops for an all out war.

What I Learned on My (Unsummer) Miami Vacation

Top Ten Things I Learned in Miami

1. It really is about the moments. They're what count and stay with us -- the rest is filler and illusion. Being in the moment and really feeling what it has to offer is hugely powerful.
2. It feels fucking good to indulge.
3. Doing nothing is important.
4. I really can't live without the Internet.
5. I am still capable of surprising myself.
6. I am not nearly as uptight as I feared I had become.
7. I haven't moved on yet but I'm finally ready to.
8. The sadness outnumbers the beauty, but the beauty outweighs the sadness in power in scope.
9. Some things go without saying, but it still feels good when someone says them.
10. Sometimes drinking too much doesn't make me throw up.

And...honorable mention: 11. I need to take more vacations!

Miami might not have given me the answer I was looking for -- namely can I move there? (The answer is no, sadly.) But it did give me insight into a lot of the baggage I've been carrying around and luckily for everyone in my life I left this morning a little less of a curmudgeon than I was when I arrived. Whew. Glad that's settled.

A Lobster, an Apple, and Some Pineapple Compote; Or Ten Hours with Vista and I Can't Ctrl+Alt+Delete My Way Out of This One...

Hooray for the longest and seemingly nonsensical title in the history of this blog.

I should start by saying my household has one phenomenally amazing new member -- this gorgeous iMac I have the pleasure to currently be working on. All tricked out and snazzier than the rest, by far. So, tonight, with my new, unbelievably capable machine in front of me, I should be happy. But I'm not.

Why?

Maybe it started with the words of doom "Please wait a moment while windows prepares to start for the first time..."

During the very, very, very, very first time in history when those words flashed across a screen -- did the world throw up a little just in the back of its throat? I believe so. Just as I did earlier today.

What I did was pretty much near all-out blasphemy at the highest level. I subverted the sheer beauty of this machine by partitioning its hard drive and installing the antichrist of all OS's -- Windows Vista. You'd think it isn't that bad, but, honestly, IT IS.

Now, to be fair, the very act of running Boot Camp on this heavenly machine made me feel like the first time that I ever cooked a lobster on my own. I have been eating lobster since I started solid foods and never thought twice about it until I decided to boil one up for dinner one night in college. There I was all apartmented-out totally grown up and away from home. I boiled a huge pot of water. Picked up my lovely little friend and tried to put him (or her?) in the pot... Tail flapping, claws outreached, I nearly fainted from the knowledge that I was about to drop a living thing in boiling water. It was horrendous. I did it, but I couldn't eat.

Running Vista on this brilliant machine is the same thing, I installed it, but I don't think I can live with keeping it around. The level of subversion -- of total degradation of a thing of beauty could only be equalled by Lise's fondness for Pineapple Compote.

Finally, after half a day, those Mac - PC "deny - allow" commercials ring true. It's not so much even the soul vs. no soul question -- I run Boot Camp (with XP) on my laptop and don't feel nearly as chilled or nauseous as today's adventure in Vista has left me. But, it's true, what happens in that advertisement. You cannot do anything in Vista without receiving a pop-up requiring you to "allow" the action... Not that I ever would expect an efficient product from MS, but still, do they have to be so blatantly barbaric about their inadequacies?

Vista's getting two more days. If I can't deal, my beautiful iMac is getting an honorable discharge from the service and I'm going to rock on with my bad self in a less cumbersome, cluttered world.

p.s. The more "Apple"-like the MS interface becomes, the more I feel them failing to achieve anything close to worthwhile.

How to Forget to Breathe

Through the years of being a overworked, haphazardly challenged, neurotic perfectionist, I have taken the art of not breathing, while still maintaining my composure and expertly racing through a day, to a whole new level of existence. In short, I've raised the bar on being several things at once: graceless and out of breath and overflowing with enthusiasm and self-assuredness.

My blue-in-the-face approach to success comforts and relaxes others even as each shallow gasp sticks in my chest and gulps for a breathe of its own.

In short, I am great at faking it. So great, in fact, that I'm swept up by my own rhythm and tempo and get carried away in the confidence of knowing it all.

So, for me, most importantly, this blog is a means toward manufacturing my own truth serum. Something that will require me to lay it all out without holding back or maintaining any level of the facade. If I peel back the onion (thanks to Jason for arguing so vehemently for it a million years and lifetimes ago) here's what I see tonight:

I'm tired. I'm still not getting enough sleep and I'm hanging on to waking in the hopes that something good will come if I stay up just a little longer.

I have so much hope its appalling. I mean every day I actually think, "maybe today will be the day that things take an upswing." And every day I actually believe it could be so -- and every night I'm so disappointed I can't breathe.

I've bitten off more than I can chew. My brain is unable to process all the roles I'm supposed to be playing right now and I feel pulled in every direction and far away from knowing me.

I like it better when I don't know me. When I'm in a perpetual state of sleep-running through life, I'm most happy.

It was better when he was here. I could pretend much easier with him and that relationship as extra layers on the onion.

I feel like people have let me down. I try to be selfless and giving at all costs, but in my heart I'm burning with resentment for the first time in my life.

I'm as strong as I pretend to be. Truly. I can do it "all" and still stay upbeat and enthusiastic... but I'm not sure that's what I want to do. Nor do I think it will help with my breathing problem.

I'm not as good of a writer as I've always dreamed I would be. And that pisses me off and makes me feel like a failure in ways that other flaws and shortcomings can't. If not a writer, than honestly, truthfully, what? What can I possibly be?

In the present state of my life I don't know one person who can see through me -- not the way he could. And that scares me.

Instead of Getting Married...

Well, as it turns out, getting married this month isn't happening. I know I've known this for nearly 6 months now, but I have officially made alternate plans for the weekend I was supposed to be getting married.

Making plans -- especially in the state my life is right now -- means I'm really not getting married. And, though I should have known this months ago, it also means he probably is never coming back.

So, instead of getting married, here's the plan:

1. Buy a bathing suit. Doesn't sound like much, I know. But for me, it's huge... I haven't owned one in about 5 years. The thought of them makes me want to crawl under a rock, but as you'll see with plan #2, a bathing suit is essential.
2. Spend the now-canceled wedding weekend in one of the most luxurious hotels in the entire country -- close to, but not on, South Beach. Enjoy 2 days in a private beach cabana and wash away all the pain (or at least dull it; or at the very least ignore it) with several Bellinis and some over-the-top spa treatments.
3. Don't call him, don't email him, don't wonder why I'm not the one. Just, whatever I do, don't think about it.
4. Maintain my composure. Make it through this month. It'll have to get better eventually.
5. Get dressed to the nines and act the part. No, I don't fit in on South Beach and I'll look like a moron compared to the Super Models -- especially when I wear the bathing suit -- but can't I at least fool myself into thinking that I can exist in their universe for 2 days of my life?

Here's what I won't be doing:

1. Getting married.
2. Feeling like my life is headed in the direction I want it to.
3. Understanding why the hell this happened to me.
4. Accepting that I am alone.
5. Looking good in a bathing suit.

April is turning out to be a long fucking month.